


New Year, New School

by Lynx22281



Series: Edison College [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 07:12:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynx22281/pseuds/Lynx22281
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean arrives on campus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Year, New School

Dean Winchester slammed the driver's side door of his '67 Chevy Impala shut and stared up at Hancock Hall, the 3-story, L-shaped brick building that would be his home for the next nine months.  The front doors were propped open allowing for a steady stream of people coming and going on the first day of move in at Edison College.  Suitcases, boxes, rugs, lamps, small appliances, and all other assorted necessities of dorm life were piled around vehicles parked next to the sidewalks, patiently waiting to be taken inside the nearby dormitories. 

 

Upperclassmen yelled out greetings to the friends they hadn’t seen all summer and parents hovered over their mostly-grown children, not ready to give them up to the almost-real world just yet.  A few younger kids, obviously dragged out against their will to help their older siblings move in, had struck up an impromptu game soccer on one of the dorm lawns.

 

The bright, hot mid-August sun shone down through white fluffy clouds drifting over the pale blue summer sky.  Dean could already feel a trickle of sweat running down the back of his neck and they hadn’t even started unpacking the car yet.  He was hot and way more nervous than he wanted to admit.  _This is the next chapter in life_ , the speaker at his graduation had said back at the beginning of June.  His next chapter was starting out 250 miles away from Lawrence, away from home, away from Mom and Sammy, away from the friends he had gone to school with since he was five. 

 

Out of the almost 300 students in his graduating class, he was the last person anybody thought would go away to college.  Ever since middle school, he and his best friend Christian had planned to go to the University of Kansas, not even half an hour from his driveway on a good traffic day.  Plans changed abruptly a year ago when Christian was killed by a drunk driver while walking home from work one night over summer break.

 

His last year of high school had been hard without Christian.  Dean had withdrawn somewhat from his usual circles, sticking close to home and his family rather than goofing off like most of his friends who suffered from senioritis.  He spent his free time practicing his violin or working at his mom’s bakery claiming he needed to save up money for school expenses, but in reality, staying busy kept his mind off the loss of his friend. 

 

The best thing to come out of the past year had been that Dean spent more time on his studies.  While he wasn’t a bad student, his grades had only been moderately above average, mostly Bs in his academic courses peppered with As in auto shop and orchestra.  He ended up staying on the honor roll for each grading period of the last year and managed to score two academic scholarships. 

 

The thought of being a small fish in a pond of 30,000 other fish at KU didn’t hold the same appeal it had when Christian was still in the picture.  During a college recruitment day, he met the admissions counselor from Edison College, a small liberal arts college, in eastern Missouri near St. Louis.  He was hooked after his first visit to the campus several weeks later.  Enrollment hovered around 2,500 undergraduate students with about two-thirds of them living on the small suburban campus.  The school felt comfortable and welcoming. 

 

However, comfortable and welcoming still didn’t completely take away from the fact that there were no familiar faces and hallways to greet him.  For the first time in his life, Dean was the new kid – well, he and the other 600-plus freshmen.   

 

An arm wrapped around his waist, pulling him out of his thoughts.  Mary squeezed him softly and smiled.  “C’mon.  Let’s get you settled in.”

 

As Dean unlocked the Impala’s trunk a lanky black guy approached the car wearing a burgundy t-shirt with DEMONS printed in white block letters across the chest.  With a friendly grin, he stuck out his hand in Dean’s direction.  “Hey, I’m Jake.  Moving in to Hancock?”

 

“Uh, hey.  I’m Dean.”  Dean shook the guy’s hand before lifting the trunk lid.  “Yeah.  Room 211.”

 

“Great.  Can I help you take anything in?” Jake asked.

 

Dean glanced over to the growing mountain of belongings being unloaded from a silver minivan parked in front of the Impala, and then looked down into his own trunk.  He had a big rolling suitcase, two medium sized boxes, a large canvas duffle bag, a backpack, a messenger-style laptop bag, a bed-in-a-bag, and two pillows.  Driving up in the car limited what he could bring, so he mostly just brought clothes and basic things that he would need right away.  A trip to Wal-Mart would take care of the rest later.  He looked back over to the three people arguing over the pile by the minivan.  “You sure you shouldn’t be helping them instead?”

 

“Nah, man.  Girls are crazy about how their stuff is handled.  I don’t want to be involved in the drama.”  Jake laughed as he hauled the rolling suitcase out of the trunk and set it on the pavement.

 

Everybody grabbed armfuls of stuff for the first trip up.  Jake led the way dragging the suitcase behind him with the duffle bag balanced on his shoulder.  Sam and Mary each carried a box; Sam stuck Dean’s pillows on top of his box.  Dean grabbed his violin from the backseat before shrugging into his backpack.  He pulled the strap of his laptop bag across his shoulder before closing the trunk.  He ran awkwardly to catch up with the others, holding bag of bedding in one hand and his violin case in the other.

 

“Well, Dean,” Jake began as he dropped the duffle bag down to the floor and hurried to unload the box from Mary’s arms.  “You’re the only person I’ve ever seen make it with all their stuff in one trip.”

 

“Only the essentials.”  Dean shrugged with a smile as he looked around the sparsely furnished room. 

 

There were two lofted wooden beds with heavy wooden desks beneath them and two sturdy, five-drawer dressers.  A sink with a mirror stood in one corner.  Two closets flanked the door to the room.  The ceiling was tall as was the window on the wall opposite the door.  There was a black futon under the window.  The walls were painted an eggshell color, not quite true white, and the floor was tiled with foot-square slate blue tiles.  A few boxes, most of them overflowing with cables and electronics, were already stacked on the right side of the room. 

 

Dean’s roommate, Ash Harvelle, was a computer science and engineering major; they had gotten to know each other over several rounds of _Call of Duty_ during the summer.  For the moment, Ash was nowhere in sight.

 

Jake headed to the door with a wave.  “Good luck, and don’t forget to check-in downstairs in the lobby to get your key and orientation packet.”

 

“Sam and I will start unpacking.  Why don't you go move the car and pick up your stuff from downstairs?”  Mary gave her eldest son a gentle shove towards the door. 

 

“Sounds good,” he replied with a grin as he reached out to ruffle his little brother’s hair, just to be annoying.  Dean threaded his way along the hallway against the flow of people with arm loads of things trying to get to dorm rooms.  The air inside was stifling from the open doors and windows allowing in the hot summer breeze and dozens of bodies moving around and bumping into things in an very poorly choreographed move-in dance.

 

The long black muscle car parked out on the sidewalk had already attracted a small crowd of curious dads by the time Dean stepped outside.  He side-stepped a little girl rushing into the building dragging a huge red pillow along the ground behind her before he jogged over to the car and unlocked the driver’s side door.  One dad sporting a ponytail and ripped jeans nodded to him in approval of his ride.  Another dad wearing a pale yellow polo shirt tucked into neatly pressed khaki pants gave Dean the once over.   He was pretty sure the guy was hoping his daughter wouldn’t bring him home at Christmas break.  Dean threw a smirk at the man as he slid into the driver’s seat and started up the big throaty V8.  Yellow-Polo-Shirt visibly jumped at the noise and Dean laughed as he pulled away from the curb to find a parking spot.  If anything could lift his mood, it was his baby and people’s reactions to it.

 

Getting out of the car, he ran his hand down the length of her shiny black panels.  Freshmen weren’t allowed to have cars on campus.  So the Impala would be heading back to Kansas.  “Take care of Mom and Sammy for me, Baby.”

 

The engine clicked as it cooled and Dean accepted that as reassurance that everything would be ok.  Quickly, he jogged back to the Hancock Lobby and stood in line with the other students waiting to get their keys and packets of information.  At the front of the line was a table laden with two neon green plastic crates stuffed full of manila envelopes.  A red-haired girl with a welcoming smile stood behind the table next to a dark-haired guy who looked like he’d much rather be elsewhere.

 

Dean chit-chatted with the people in line around him, but five minutes later couldn’t remember their names or what floor they said they lived on.  Finally he was at the table.

 

“Hi!  I’m Anna, the resident assistant for the second floor.  What’s your name?” the girl said with a big grin that belied the fact she had been saying the same thing over and over again all day along. 

 

“Dean Winchester,” he replied instantly liking Anna.  She was friendly and bubbly in a genuine way that made Dean smile back at her.

 

She looked over to the dark-haired guy as he rifled through the bin marked “M-Z”.  He pulled out an envelope with Dean’s name on it and looked up as he handed to him.  Dean blinked in surprise.  The guy had absolutely gorgeous blue eyes.  He wondered if he wore contacts.  Surely nobody’s eyes were naturally that color.  The guy offered him a tiny, forced grimace of a smile before picking up a clipboard and flipping through several sheets of paper to check Dean’s name off the list.

 

Anna thumbed through another clipboard before pulling a key from a lock box in the middle of the table and handing it to him.  “Hey, you’re on my floor!  That’s great!  We’re going to have a floor meeting tonight at 10pm.  Just an ice breaker, but I hope to see you there.”

 

"Yeah, guess I'll be there.  Thanks,” he said as he looked back to Anna, perplexed at the seemingly unfriendly guy next to her.

 

She rolled her eyes, but the smile never left her face.  “Don’t mind my brother.  Castiel’s here totally against his will while my partner is on her lunch break.”  Anna gave the guy a nudge with her shoulder before moving on to help the next student.

 

Dean gave the brother-sister pair a final glance, meeting the brother’s gaze briefly again, before heading back upstairs to unpack. 

 

The next few hours passed by in a hot blur as Mary and Sam helped Dean settle into his room.  Ash showed up with more of his stuff, helped by his Aunt Ellen and cousin Jo, who was a freshman bio major and spent the morning moving into Miller Hall next door.

 

Dean and Ash took a break from unpacking to make up a list of communal stuff they needed for the room and divided it up between the two of them.  Then the Winchesters set off for shopping, aided by directions from the orientation packet.  The college was only a couple of miles away from a decent sized shopping center with a Wal-Mart and Home Depot that were sure to have all the things on their list. 

 

After stopping at Biggerson’s for their last family meal together for a while, they returned to the dorm with some things to make the barren room more homey – a plush area rug for the cold tiled floor, a curtain for the window to block out the afternoon sun, some cheap dishes and silverware, a toaster oven, and snacks to last a few days.

 

By early evening the room was mostly settled.  Dean finished making his bed and looked over to his mom and not-so-little brother sitting together on the futon.  Sam was leaning against Mary’s side playing _Angry Birds_ on his phone as she smoothed his too-long hair back behind his ears.  His mom caught him watching them and gave him a gentle smile before tugging Sam up off the couch.  “C’mon, Sam.  We all have an early start tomorrow morning.”

 

Dean climbed down from the loft and led his family out of the room so he could walk them to the Impala.  Once they were outside, he wrapped an arm around his mom’s waist and threw his other arm over his brother’s shoulders.  His little brother only had a few more inches to go before he’d be as tall as him.  Dean wondered if that would happen by Christmas break; Sam had already grown nearly two inches since school let out in May.

 

The Winchesters stood by the car, wrapped up in each other for several long minutes.  Mary took a step back to cup Dean’s face.  Smiling up at him, she thumbed away the single tear that spilled down his cheek despite his best efforts to not turn into a girly mess.  “I’m proud of you, kiddo.  If you need anything, just call.”

 

“Thanks, Mom.”  He leaned in to kiss her cheek and give her one final squeeze before fishing his keys out of his pocket.  “Take care of the car for me.”

 

“You got it,” she replied with a wink as she went to unlock the driver’s side door and give the boys a moment alone.

 

Dean pulled his younger brother close, wrapping his arms around his shoulders.  He squeezed his eyes tight.  He spoke softly against Sam’s ear.  “Sammy, you take care of Mom and take care of yourself, ok?”

 

“Yeah, Dean.  I will.”  Sam hugged his brother back fiercely, not even complaining about being called _Sammy_ out in public. 

 

Dean ruffled Sam’s shaggy hair again, earning him a slightly exasperated look.  “I’ll see you at fall break.”

 

Sam nodded and ran around to the passenger’s side door as their mom cranked the car.  Dean leaned through the open driver’s window to give his mom a final peck to her cheek.  Mary reached out to run her hand down Dean’s cheek one last time and gave him a brilliant smile.  “Be good, but have fun while you’re here, ok?  Do things you wouldn’t normally do.  You’ll be glad you did later on.”

 

“Ok.  Drive safe.”  Dean looked between his mom and his brother and smiled for both of them.  This was it.  They were heading home, leaving him on his own.  He stepped back as his mom pulled the Impala out of the parking spot.  She paused to wave at him before driving down the street.  Dean waved until he couldn’t see them anymore before heading up the sidewalk towards Hancock.

**Author's Note:**

> Had to edit this because the original c&p from Word put in all sorts of code that put random spaces in weird spots.


End file.
